And, to top it all off, the report's co-author, a guy named Jason Richwine, had written a dissertation about immigrants and their low IQs. As Dylan Matthews of the Washington Post's WonkBlog (5/8/13) wrote, the paper argued:

No one knows whether Hispanics will ever reach IQ parity with whites, but the prediction that new Hispanic immigrants will have low-IQ children and grandchildren is difficult to argue against.

Bill Keller

This controversy led Bill Keller of the New York Times to write a column (5/13/13) about Heritage, sure–but also about the big lessons of this scandal. And the first lesson? Think tanks on "both sides" are up to no good.

To his credit, Keller points out that the other Heritage author, Robert Rector, has a record worth examining:

This is the same researcher who, according to my colleague Jason DeParle, once published a report claiming tens of thousands of poor people had Jacuzzis and swimming pools–extrapolating from a government survey that had found four. Before you laugh, you should know that Rector's views on the deadbeat poor had considerable influence on the shape of Bill Clinton's welfare reform, and that his earlier version of the costs-of-amnesty study helped kill immigration reform last time around. He is an ideological force in Washington.

This is a good point–one that FAIR made about Rector over a decade ago (Extra!, 1/99). His ubiquity in media discussions of poverty would suggest that the problem isn't so much about him, but about journalists who feel the need to quote him when writing about the lives of poor people (perhaps for the sake of "balance").

Keller thinks there are three lessons to take away from the Heritage story–and it's the first one that is troubling.

He writes:

This is an unusually stark sign of the transformation of Washington's think tank culture into a more partisan archipelago of propaganda factories. In recent years, according to James McGann, director of the Think Tanks and Civil Societies Program at the University of Pennsylvania, think tanks on both the right and the left have set up explicit lobbying arms, anointed leaders known not for academic credibility but for partisan ferocity, and picked their fights at least in part to help drive their fundraising. Last year the right-wing billionaire brothers Charles and David Koch exercised their megadonors' droit du seigneur over the libertarian Cato Institute, ousting the longtime president. The announcement in December that Sen. Jim DeMint, a Tea Party darling, would become Heritage's new president was not the beginning of a transformation, but its logical culmination. DeMint was enthusiastically front and center last week in the unveiling of the Heritage immigration report, even as scholars in his employ were telling friends they found the study embarrassing. I'm told the 2007 attack on immigration reform was gangbusters as a fundraising message. Some speculate that this time around the issue might also make a nice platform for DeMint's possible presidential ambitions.

So what is Keller describing here? All of this is happening at institutions on the right.

That's not to say that there is no room to critique liberal institutions for spending too much time defending the Obama White House. But are there similar examples of left-liberal think tanks sacrificing "academic credibility for partisan ferocity"? Maybe. But Keller doesn't name any.

Perhaps the real lesson is that the "partisan archipelago of propaganda factories" exists mainly on the right.

Activism Director and and Co-producer of CounterSpinPeter Hart is the activism director at FAIR. He writes for FAIR's magazine Extra! and is also a co-host and producer of FAIR's syndicated radio show CounterSpin. He is the author of The Oh Really? Factor: Unspinning Fox News Channel's Bill O'Reilly (Seven Stories Press, 2003). Hart has been interviewed by a number of media outlets, including NBC Nightly News, Fox News Channel's O'Reilly Factor, the Los Angeles Times, Newsday and the Associated Press. He has also appeared on Showtime and in the movie Outfoxed. Follow Peter on Twitter at @peterfhart.

This story is based on a lot of half stories and half truths about what people said or wrote or meant.Two things going on here.One… the libs want more poor immigrants piled in here to overwhelm the voting numbers.Even James Carvel admits as much.That is a factor in Obamas thinking.If these scandals have not proved how all his reasoning is based on political brinksmanship-you are not listening.Not to say the people on FAIR are thinking that way.But he is.We learned this week also that a lot of the way the press views Tea party and the such(right wing religious fanatics) were factoried out to them from offices in Cincinnati.The same offices that held the IRS attack dogs against Tea party folks.Coincidence?Yeah right.The attack on the heritage foundation and people like Rush Limbaugh is just more of the same.Like water breaking on the rocks, believe me you are not leaving a mark.Because you see….they are right.And in the arena of ideas they will win every time.As far as this IQ nonsense.Medically speaking while it is true that some dispensations of people and races score slightly higher in overall IQ(Cambodians for instance are near the top)And some score lower….The overall difference is only a few points.Five points up or down.Not much to right home about(as Rush Limbaugh spoke about with a member of the Heritage foundation)We conservatives do not pigeon hole people into classes as the liberal front would have you believe.That is a constant liberal game.So it is funny that they think they have found one thing to turn the tables.

I did not see your evidence to claim or prove Heritage is wrong regarding $6 trillion additional national debt regarding the amnesty" for 30 to 50 million illegals and family and others. MY OPINION IS HERITAGE IS VERY CORRECT. I do see your CONTINUOUS INCOMPETENCE AND FAILURE TO DECLARE ILLEGALS ARE A HUMAN RIGHTS VIOLATION OF AMERICAN CITIZENS PER ILLEGALS VIOLATION OF UNITED NATIONS UNIVERSAL DECLARATION OF HUMAN RIGHTS (1948). FAIR'S FAILURE TO PERFORM THE SIMPLEST TASKS COSTS AMERICANS $TRILLIONS. THANKS FOR RUINING AMERICA.

Wow, you missed the simplest task too: illegals are a violation of American citizens human rights (said UN Declaration…). Yes or No? Suppose FAIR made their mark on this issue 10 years ago and saved trillions? Yes or No?